Beneath the Ice (26 page)

Joel turned towards Katz. ‘Come on, mate, give him a minute. He’s only just woken up.’

‘A minute? What the hell do you mean, a minute? Without water, we’ll be dead in two days!’

As he spoke, he looked down at the hundreds of packets of dehydrated food stacked just beside them.

‘Shit!’ he screamed, kicking the one nearest to him. ‘Even the food hasn’t got any damn water in it.’

They all watched the packet skid across the floor, before coming to rest against a sidewall. Directly above was a pathetic collection of dents and scratches running in a vague semi-circle. They were the sum total of three hours’ hard work during which he and Joel had been trying to break through the wall using the aluminium drill casings. Despite the base’s derelict exterior, someone had taken great pains to reinforce the interior and all they had to show for their efforts were superficial marks. If breaking through the sidewall was going to be their means of escape, it would take a lot longer than two days.

‘Listen,’ Luca said, raising a hand to try and calm him. ‘This base is old and broken-down. There must be a way out.’

‘There isn’t,’ Joel replied flatly, eyes tilting up towards Katz for affirmation. ‘We’ve been through every part of this module and there’s only one way in and out. The rest was sealed off long ago. And the really creepy bit is that whoever did it was living alone here.’

A couple of hours earlier they had come across a bizarre enclave tucked away from the main part of the room, where a single bed had been bolted to the wall. Around it were hundreds of little images drawn with the point of a compass. They were of simple things, like rain and trees, flames and an open hearth, but they told of an absolute removal from normal life. There was something haunting about them, each image wracked by the desperate desire to remember, a human being trying to crystallise and hold on to memories of a life outside Antarctica.

Enshrined by them all was a single photograph. It was fixed dead centre and showed a man with slicked back red hair, now greying from age, and a square, wholesome jaw. The rest was difficult to discern because someone had repeatedly jabbed the point of a compass or knife into the man’s eyes, perforating the photographic paper until only two gaping holes remained. They stared out blindly from the image, imparting a lingering sense of disquiet, as if he were still somehow observing their every move. Joel looked up. ‘I mean, who the hell are we dealing with here, Luca? Who would want to trap us inside this place?’

‘I don’t know,’ he replied. ‘The guy came out of nowhere and didn’t utter a word.’

As he desperately tried to make sense of the situation, Luca’s gaze turned towards the skylights. He pictured Bates sitting in an armchair on the oil rig, then Dedov with his vodka-laced smile and underlying hint of menace. Finally, an image of Bear came to him and his eyes narrowed in concentration as he tried to piece together the fragments of their last conversation. Raising a hand to his temples, he pressed down on them in an effort to shut out the constant pounding. The pain was unbearable.

‘He said . . .’ Katz began.

‘Shut up,’ Luca breathed. ‘Just shut up.’ He closed his eyes momentarily, mustering his strength. ‘I don’t know much. But while you were sleeping I spoke to GARI, telling them we were holed up in here during the storm. Then I got through to a contact of mine on the outside.’

Over the next ten minutes, he recounted as much of his conversation with Bear as he could remember. Every few seconds Katz would punctuate his narrative, firing questions at Luca about the technical composition of the seed or how Pearl was even planning on getting to Antarctica so late in the season. But Luca was steadfast, telling them what he knew and simply shrugging when he didn’t. He had soon realised that there were huge gaps in what he had been told or could figure out for himself, and made no effort to disguise the fact. Katz, however, remained convinced that Luca was holding something back. With each new question, his tone became more and more accusatory.

‘This is such bullshit!’ he shouted, stabbing his finger towards Luca. ‘I’ve met Pearl and he’s invested millions in the lake. He’s not going to wipe all that out by using it as a goddamn Petri dish.’

‘Hold on, Katz,’ Joel interjected, raising his hands in an effort to placate him. ‘Let’s just stick with what we know. Someone’s been out here for a very long time, and from all the casings we’ve seen, they’ve obviously been drilling. Whichever way you slice it, those two facts alone mean that there’s got to be some truth in what Luca said.’

There was a moment’s pause before Joel added, ‘And whatever they’re up to, it’s obviously secret. Secret enough for them to want to stop us leaving here and telling anyone about it?’

Katz shook his head, his mind plagued by doubts. ‘But why didn’t they just open up our drill site and throw the seed down there? Why go to all the effort of constructing a totally new borehole?’

Joel turned towards the drill casings. ‘Maybe it’s got something to do with the fact that those are eight-inch casings. We used five. They must need a larger-diameter borehole for some reason.’

Just as the room went quiet, there was a low electronic beep and it took Luca several seconds to realise that it was coming from his own watch. Staring down at the luminous dial, he shook his head slowly. It was set to trigger one hour before they were due to meet Dedov’s tractors at the rendezvous point. The simple fact was that time was running out for them. With each hour that passed, they were getting closer and closer to the departure of the last flight of the season.

‘Look, we need to concentrate,’ he told the others. ‘The lake, Pearl – all that is secondary. Right now, we need to figure out how the hell we are going to get out of this place and back to GARI. The last flight arrives in fourteen hours’ time. And they aren’t going to keep it waiting on the runway just for us.’

‘But they
have
to wait,’ Joel said, his eyes switching between the other two men. ‘It’s the last one. They’ll wait while Dedov puts together a Search and Rescue team. You said yourself, they know we’re here at the base.’

Luca slowly shook his head. ‘E.A.P.,’ he said.

‘What the hell’s that?’ Joel asked desperately.

‘Emergency Antarctic Protocol,’ Katz explained, dragging the words out as if they were somehow unholy. ‘The plane will wait a
maximum
of twelve hours, if the pilots think it’s safe. They can’t risk the entire plane being trapped for the winter with everyone on board. As soon as the light starts to fade, everything changes.’

‘But they can’t just fucking leave,’ Joel protested. ‘We’d be trapped.’

‘Any more than we are already?’ Katz taunted.

‘I’m serious, Katz!’ Joel countered. ‘So why doesn’t the plane fly back again? Just drop off everyone else and then come back and get us a few days later?’

‘Think about it!’ snapped Katz. ‘All the bulldozers and snow ploughs get garaged for winter, so who’s going to clear the snow from the runway? With these storms, it’d be metres deep within a couple of days.’

Joel shook his head, standing up and looking towards the door to the base. ‘We’ve got to get another message out. Tell them they
have
to wait for us. For Christ’s sake, all we need is a few more hours.’

Luca raised a hand to silence him. ‘A few more hours? Even
if
– and it’s a big if, by the way – Dedov has already put together a Search and Rescue team, they are going to have to find a way over the mountains. Then they’ll have to break through the door of this base and after that they’ll have to get us back to the runway. All that within twenty-six hours.’

There was a long pause. ‘Sorry, Joel,’ Luca continued, ‘but it ain’t going to happen. Best case, Dedov leaves behind a wintering team which actually tries to come and get us. If we did all make it back to GARI, we’d still have to wait until the following summer to go back home.’

‘But that’s not going to happen either,’ Katz added, his top lip pulling into a foul sneer. ‘Because we’re going to run out of water long before a rescue team can get to us!’

Reaching down, he picked up the empty saucepan and flung it across the room with all his might. It struck one of the base’s internal supports before clattering to the ground. There was silence.

A full minute passed before Joel slowly slid down to sit beside Luca, a look of utter bewilderment on his face. Katz stood with hands on hips, while his jaw clenched in seething fury. His gaze switched between them as if he were unable to decide where the blame belonged.

Luca let out a long sigh and let his head fall back against the stack of drill casings. The pounding at his temples had receded a little, but already he felt thirsty. His lips were chapped and dry, the skin cracked by the sheer absence of moisture in the Antarctic air.

He let his eyes drift across the room, blankly passing from one object to the next, as the sheer futility of their situation began to sink in. Whichever way he looked at it, they were out of time. Their only chance was to try to break out of the base and make it back over the mountain, but with only half a litre of water between them, they’d die of thirst in less than a day. Just a couple more litres and maybe they’d stand a chance.

His eyes continued to drift before finally settling on the handle of a Pelican case standing upright no more than ten feet away. It looked battered from exposure to the elements; smatterings of ice still clung to the black plastic ridges. Katz had brought it into the main room upon waking and discovering that everything else was gone. The lake samples had been the first thing he had looked for in all the confusion.

‘Looks like we’ve got another couple of litres after all,’ Luca said, nodding towards the case.

Both Joel and Katz followed his gaze, taking several seconds to grasp what he was referring to.

‘Not a fucking chance!’ Katz blurted, staggering forward to guard the case. ‘It’s taken three years of work to get these and you’re not going anywhere near them.’

Luca stood up, wincing from the effort.

‘I’m serious,’ Katz growled. ‘No one is going to start drinking the fucking lake samples!’

‘Let’s see how you feel about that twenty-four hours from now,’ Luca replied, gingerly rubbing the side of his head. ‘Just hope you can drink the stuff after twenty million years.’

As he spoke, they each became aware of a low vibration. It was distant, a soft mechanical thud that steadily grew louder. Several seconds passed before they realised it was the sound of a helicopter coming directly towards them. The noise grew and grew, becoming impossibly loud, until the dark underbelly of the machine suddenly passed directly over the skylights.

‘It’s a rescue mission!’ Joel shouted, hopping up and down as he tried to see further out.

‘But we were told Pearl’s helicopter was completely unserviceable,’ Katz replied. ‘All the ski planes had already flown back and so the chopper was the first thing we looked at to get us here. We were told it was completely knackered.’

‘Who cares?’ Joel replied, his mood already lifting. ‘Somebody got the damn thing working and now they’re here for us.’

‘That’s Pearl’s helicopter, right?’ Luca asked.

Katz nodded. ‘Yeah. It came in by container ship and he flew it once or twice at the beginning of summer, visiting some of the other science bases. Then it broke somehow and it’s been sitting in the hangar at GARI ever since.’

Luca nodded, processing the information. Eventually he shook his head.

‘What is it?’ Katz asked, watching his every move.

‘If that’s Pearl’s helicopter and he needs to launch the seed,’ Luca said, following the direction of Joel’s gaze, ‘then I don’t think it’s here for any rescue.’

He turned towards Joel, who was still staring up at the skylights expectantly.

‘Don’t get too excited,’ Luca warned. ‘We’re not out of this yet.’

IN THE STATION
chief’s office at GARI, Vladimir Dedov pulled a small black-and-white photograph off the wall, revealing a neat square of unblemished paint underneath. He held the print up to the light, tilting the grainy image to one side, and smiled. Despite his reputation as a poet, he was not a man prone to nostalgia, but, in the last few days, he had arrived at the inescapable conclusion that all he had left of any real worth were his memories.

The image had been taken almost forty years ago and showed seven men dressed in Soviet-style polar clothing and posing in front of an old Antonov-2 bi-plane. It had been 1974 and the beginning of his first winter in Antarctica. As he stared from person to person, his eyes settled on his own slender face from all those years ago. His beard had been shorter back then, and untouched by grey, while his eyes were a deep, brooding brown. They stared unflinchingly into the camera, filled with the self-assurance only the young possess.

Dedov shook his head, almost unable to believe how confident and energetic he had looked back then. His pose spoke of a man with his whole life ahead of him, a man destined for great things.

Turning the photograph over in his hands, he saw his late wife’s handwriting scrawled across the back. His eyes narrowed as he tried to decipher the deep slanting letters and flamboyant loops. He heard himself tut affectionately, remembering how they had always joked that her handwriting was so bad it could have been used for military codes.

Together always. Stay warm, my poet.

Dedov sniffed as a flood of emotion caught him by surprise. His eyes misted up. Normally he would have been quick to fight any such sentimentality, but he was too old and too ill to pretend any longer. Instead he squeezed his eyes shut, forcing out a single tear which rolled down his cheek and quickly became lost in the thick hair of his beard. Katerina. His late wife had been so beautiful back then and they had laughed, even when times were so tough that they barely had enough food on the table.

‘My dear Katya,’ Dedov whispered. After so many years, his pet name for her felt so familiar on his lips. She had been killed outright in a car accident on the Nevsky Prospekt in Saint Petersburg. It had been a Tuesday, a totally unremarkable Tuesday.